Hi i have a very popular website which targets the UK. Now as we all know UK encompasses: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. This means most people would be using www.google.co.uk right? My website is only dedicated to UK residents. But recently i have been provided with content which also covers Ireland which means not only my website will cover UK but also Ireland. My website is PR1 on www.google.co.uk and also on www.google.ie, but now i am thinking shall i obtain a .ie domain as now i will be able to facilitate people across Ireland also. For a popular domain i think it would be feasible to obtain a .ie domain for my .co.uk website. Now my question is to all Irish residents, not that it will make a difference even though i am PR1 for both google ie and .co.uk but do you use google.co.uk or google.ie? Cheers!
The extension of the Google address doesn't mean anything, what matters is the data center it's pulling data from. Most likely the UK data centers have direct relation if not almost the same to Irelands. You can test this theory by checking search results directly for your data centers in that geographical location via their IPs as URLs.